>He may also use "TEM" without limit and without
>admitting that he is doing so.

Et tu, Lou? So, you are really not sure what "The Education Mafia" means? Really? I'd bet you are pretty sure what your socialists friends mean when they talk about "Big Oil", or "Wall Street", or "Banksters" (a portmanteau of "banker" and "ganster"), or "capitalists", or "petty bourgoisie". How about "The 1%" and "The 99%"? No problem there, eh? But, somehow you just can't wrap your brain around the idea of "The Education Mafia". Gosh, Lou, I wonder who has more explaining to do.

When intelligent laypersons asked Sean Carroll, doctor of physical science, why the Higgs boson was called "the God particle" he laughed and said "marketing".

Although I was / am quite active in Occupy and my friends appear in Occupy Unmasked by Citizens United (a so-called "right wing" 'expose'"). That's Troy bawling out the interviewer -- they cut to him several times, show him using uncouth language (tsk).

So do I know what the "1%" and the "99%" mean? "Marketing" I say (tip of the hat to Sean).

Just because you're some rich dweeb with a yacht in the marina you're too busy to use and a few houses here and there, doesn't make you some "ruling elite".

Gandhi didn't have a ton of dough yet was taken seriously by many, much as Winston Churchill thought he was a buffoon (the feeling was somewhat mutual).

So this myth that there's a 1% elite of financially well-to-do that rules the world -- that's a dumb and stupid an idea as the Protocols of Zion (which hoax Henry Ford fell for, at least until he snapped out of it, many screeds later).

It's Madison Avenue style advertising and PR that helps move the levers, capitalists being much better at propaganda than communists.

Madison Avenue and it's "mad men" (mostly an historical chapter as the advertising industry is everywhere now) were always more powerful than Wall Street in my account. Motivational psychology is way more developed than most investment theories.

Investors depend on advertisers to work their magic, to make those profits role in (as people continue to consume what they maybe don't need).

A really big part of advertising that doesn't get talking about much is continuing to develop the brand loyalty (including to a religion, to a nation) of those who've have bought in, those who've drunk the kool-aid.

Occupy is the same way. "You didn't bet on the wrong horse, as there's a future for you too" -- what they were told at Washington High School that night (something of a local headquarters). We were showing them a positive future that was more democratic, more egalitarian.

My point: these terms need have no specific meaning in order to sway opinion and lead to plot developments.

There is no such thing as the 1%, or the 99%, but it helps to have a peg to hang your mask on anyway.

Haim's "Education Mafia" was useful as it helped me develop my "Education Yakuza" meme, a gangsta underground, Asia influenced, that is challenging authorities on the Pacific west coast, in cahoots with Hollywood at some level (and TV more generally).

We mock east coast publishing houses and their fat / stupid K-12 textbooks (similar to Dom Rosa in that way).

We set up learning institutions not staffed by rank and file teachers.

We're geeks. We collaborate globally and "world domination" is our game, what else could it be? -- a self mockingly promulgated meme: